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I can't find this on the web, so here follows a note I wrote in 1991of an odd event in my computing career.

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There's no such thing as bad publicity, the saying goes.Unless, of course, you have no interest in being a public figure.That's where Richard Stallman and I start to diverge.

A friend called early Saturday to report some good news; groggily,I countered with a feeling of impending doom. I had to spend theday preparing for a talk Monday afternoon at MIT. The talk itselfwould be fine: I'd been invited by Butler Lampson to talk about Plan 9at the Lab for Computer Science and took that as the kind of honorI rise to. I'd give a hell of talk, provided I was allowed to.The problem, I said, is that MIT and I are connected by some history.

I explained about The League for Programming Freedom,just the `League' to insiders, whose multiply ambiguous namehearkens to an innocent age in software. Free Software islike Free Love, a hippie pipe dream in whichcomputing is free from venality, commercial interests, evencapitalism. The founder of the League, Richard Stallman,has been preaching the gospel of promiscuous programmingfor years now and has won many converts, especiallyin academia. Especially at MIT. Especially among the undergraduates.Especially in the building on Technology Square in Cambridge thatthe League shares, in part, with LCS.

Stallman's sermons, in print and in person, always include along harangue about patents on software. The citation in thatharangue is usually #4,555,755, AT&T's US patent on what iscolloquially called ``backing store,'' a technique for implementingwindows on a bitmap display. This patent is of particular interestto Stallman because he claims to have used the idea, before the patentwas filed, while writing the window system for theLisp Machine at MIT. The patent is of interest to me because I amlisted as the inventor.

I don't wish to dive into the legal and technical intricacies ofthe patent question here. I will just state that I know what Iinvented and when I invented it, and I know what Stallman did andwhen he did it, and I do not believe that Stallman had nearly asgood an idea as I did. And as for the propriety of softwarepatents, I signed a contract when I joined AT&T that said, ineffect, that I could work on whatever I fancied and would besupported well in that endeavor; all AT&T asked in return was thatthey be allowed to make money from my work. In Stallman'sworld that is a Faustian deal, but then I always thought onlyboring people went to Heaven.

When the patent was filed (October 7, 1982; issuedNovember 26, 1985), there were very few software patents andthe occasion was celebrated. I was congratulated warmly andpeople were excited about the future of software patents.Nowadays, however, the climate in universities at least isvery different, and Richard Stallman is almost single-handedlyresponsible for the change. (The business community, on the otherhand, is still excited.)

A few years ago, AT&T began quietly pressing its case on a smallportfolio of computer graphics patents, with #4,555,775 being central.Polite letters were written to a number of places inviting peopleto draw up license agreements; polite letters were returned, andlegalities proceeded normally. (I don't know, and wouldn't say ifI did, what the state of those legalities is today.) One of theletters went to the X consortium at MIT, where it was largelyignored. A follow-up letter early in 1991 hit the electronicbulletin boards, however, and I have been a public figure eversince.

I hung up and began preparing for the worst. Stallman and I hadnever met, and I felt sure he'd capitalize on my visit to hisbuilding.

I was therefore not surprised early Monday afternoon, as we were eatinga takeout lunch in the fifth-floor lounge at LCS, when someonesaid that Stallman was preparing to stage a protest at my talk.Jerry Saltzer went to his office to get a copy of the announcement,made on a local LCS electronic bulletin board:

You may have heard that AT&T has a patent on a simple technique called "backing store" which consists of saving the hidden parts of a window in off-screen memory. AT&T is using this patent to threaten to sue all the users of X windows, including MIT. A few weeks ago, the X consortium stated that these threats are "chilling to university research".

Rob Pike, who obtained this patent for AT&T, is going to be visiting Tech Square on Monday afternoon. If you don't like AT&T's monopolistic threat, now's the time to express your opinion by joining in a quiet protest against his visit.

Let's meet on the fourth floor of 545 Tech Square, near room 430, around 2:15pm.

Please make a sign, even an el-cheapo sign, to identify yourself as part of the protest. Make up a slogan on the subject of Pike, AT&T, backing store, X windows, patents..., then write it with a magic marker on a piece of copier paper.

(Pike has spoken publicly in favor of software patents and the backing store patent in particular. He is thus not a reluctant participant in AT&T's campaign of threats.)

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This notice has some characteristic inaccuracies, of which the worstis that AT&T has never threatened to sue anyone over the patent,but I love it anyway. The penultimate paragraph typifies Stallmanas only Stallman himself can. I asked if Stallman really believedthat people needed instructions on how to make signs. I was toldthat among MIT undergraduates a bizarre form of political correctnesshad developed, putting Stallman in charge of a pack of eagermisguided nerds who in a healthier environment would probablybe protesting the killing of rats in biology class.

My hosts at LCS were mortified. Stallman had staged a protestat a company (to complain about Lotus's ``look and feel'' lawsuit),but had never picketed a technical talk. Moreover, I was theguest of LCS, not the League, had been invited to give this talk,and was planning to give a technical lecture, not a legal debate,on a topic unrelated to patents. There was even a suggestionabout examining the MIT code to see what it said about freedomof speech. But then someone pointed out thatStallman, for all his eccentricities (don't get me started) waspolite, and if he wanted a `quiet' protest it would be quiet, andI agreed.A wag remarked that in the cloistered MIT world, participatingin a demonstration like this would be a broadening experience.

I was admonished not to talk to the protesters, not to answerany questions about patents, and to let one of my hosts deflectany verbal missile hurled at me. I replied that I had expectedas much and was prepared. For example, I was wearing a Bugs BunnyT-shirt rather than a three-piece suit; I am a researcher morethan an AT&T Ambassador, to quote a giveaway pencil from a fewyears back.

I needed to go to the lecture room early to prepare a laptop andoverhead projector for a brief demo during my talk. Because ofa scheduling conflict, the room was not a classroom but a sortof playroom full of bean bags and not enough chairs.

I quickly identified the protesters: they were the ones in the backwith hand-written slogans on pieces of copier paper taped to theirchests. ``We don't back AT&T's Store of Patents,'' was perhapsthe most creative sign, except for a woman in a wheelchair with alarge placard reading, ``Patents Cripple Software.'' I lookedtwice to verify that she needed the wheelchair. I tried to meetStallman's gaze but he would only steal surreptitious sidewaysglances as he nervously paced back and forth in front of hisentourage.

My equipment set up easily, so I sat down in a reserved chairin the front row to await the starting time and began chattingto someone from LCS. Someone tapped my shoulder. I turned tosee a sign-encrusted protester. Physical contact. I braced myself.He spoke.

- Excuse me, would you mind moving? I won't be able to see the screen.

- Don't worry, I'm giving the talk so I'll be moving all through it.

- Fine. Thanks.

He sat down. At that moment, I finally relaxed with the realizationthat nothing ugly was going to happen.

And nothing did. The talk went very well; I was pleased with thestory I told, a technical explanation of how distributed applicationsare built in Plan 9 using its namespace operations (patent applied for).The protesters were surprised, I think, that my subject was interestingto them. At one point they all applauded spontaneously when I describeda feature of the system. I also think they were surprised that theinventor of #4,555,755 was funny, theatrical, and clever. At leasthalf the questions (all technical) during and after the talk were fromthe protesters. Stallman said nothing.

Afterwards an LCS member said that, as a result of Stallman's ploy,my audience was about twice what it would have been. The peoplehe dragged in came for political reasons but ended up learningsomething.

Here's what the League's newsletter said about the event:

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CAMBRIDGE, MA, November 18, 1991 -- Rob Pike, a software designer from AT&T Bell Labs, expected to deliver an ordinary seminar on his latest research project. Instead, he found a room filled with programmers carrying signs to protest the consequences of his previous project: the AT&T "backing store" patent which AT&T has used to threaten all the members of the X Consortium, including MIT itself. Of the approximately 80 people present at the talk, about 50 carried protest signs. The protestors (sic) did not try to interfere with the seminar. They simply raised their signs as Pike began to speak. This accomplished the purpose of making their ire known.

---

I accomplished my purpose of delivering a ``seminar on [my] latestresearch project.'' Other than being a good talk, it was also,in the end, pretty ordinary.

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